


Happy Times

by Ellimac



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellimac/pseuds/Ellimac
Summary: Yasmin Khan is in love with the Doctor. But she has no idea what to do about it.





	Happy Times

Yaz is in love with the Doctor.

When it happened, she doesn’t know. It could have started the first time the Doctor grabbed her out of the jaws of danger, lifting her up with an unexpected strength. It could have been when the Doctor agreed to take her to see her grandmother, and the ensuing events, but she thinks it was before that. It could have been that time with the frogs, or the time with the dying planet, or any number of times. But as for _how_ it happened… well, that one’s easy.

The Doctor is _good_. Fundamentally good. At least, that’s how it seems to Yaz. She’s always trying to do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t completely clear. She makes friends easily and loves life, and all things living, and many things unliving too. She’s said that she has two hearts, which makes sense to Yaz; there’s too much feeling in her to contain into just one. She’s full of bursting energy and such wonderful, beautiful ideas. How can Yaz not be in love?

But she says nothing, because the Doctor is so much older than her (she says) and so very, very alien in many ways, and she worries that their easy friendship would be pulled apart if she confessed and the Doctor doesn’t reciprocate…

“If you like her, you should tell her,” Graham says.

Yaz gives an uncomfortable laugh. “Of course I like her. Who doesn’t like her? She’s the best person any of us have ever met.”

Graham gives her a meaningful look. “You know what I meant.”

Yaz doesn’t respond, and Graham doesn’t press the point. She hopes it’s not that obvious to everyone.

But as days pass, and they continue to have adventures, Yaz begins to realize that it is. Since her conversation with Graham, she notices when she’s staring—and it’s a lot. She notices her heartbeat speed up when the Doctor grabs her hand. She notices how easy it is to talk to her, and how much she wants to keep doing it, no matter what the subject. Every now and then she catches Graham looking at her, and he raises his eyebrows before she looks away, embarrassed. Seems he’s everyone’s granddad, now.

Still, she doesn’t tell the Doctor. She thinks about it; maybe Graham’s right, maybe she _should_ say something. She goes over it in her head, thinking of all the ways it could go. Suppose she tells her, and the Doctor simply doesn’t know what she means? She may look human, but she _is_ an alien. Who’s to say her species even has a concept of romance?

Or what if she tells her and the Doctor says “Oh good, I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up, now I can lay eggs in your torso as tradition dictates?” Perhaps not the most likely outcome, but isn’t it possible? Again, she is an alien. Yaz has seen enough movies to know that aliens have all kinds of technology to make themselves appear to be what they’re not. What if she’s actually some kind of squid monster who dies after mating?

Or what if she doesn’t like her back? Not as extreme as the other options, perhaps, but it still lingers in Yaz’s mind like a cat waiting to pounce. What if Yaz confesses her feelings, and the Doctor just says “That’s sweet, but let’s just be friends?” Or worse, “Oh, er, I only think of you as a friend, can we just forget this ever happened?”

Or what if she _does_ like her back?

Yaz can’t figure out why that option feels like the scariest. It’s what she wants, isn’t it? But somehow, the idea of it terrifies her.

So she says nothing, and she goes on saying nothing until the Doctor sits beside her with a book and says, “Can I show you something, Yaz?”

Of course Yaz nods, and looks over the Doctor’s shoulder as she opens the book. It looks to be a diary of sorts, with scribbled entries in various different handwritings. The Doctor riffles through these until she arrives on a page with no writing at all, but pictures. Moving pictures.

“You like it?” she says. “It’s sort of a journal of my adventures. Of course, I haven’t kept it up perfectly… I think most of my eighth incarnation’s adventures are missing. Kept forgetting who I was. Though come to think of it, I don’t remember why.” She makes a face, and points down at the page. “Anyway. That’s me with a couple of companions. See?”

Yaz does see. She sees a boy in a kilt and a girl in some very strange clothing, and with them, an older man clutching a flute. No, a recorder. There’s no sound to this, but it seems to Yaz as if the three of them are having a spirited conversation.

“That’s Jamie, and that’s Zoe,” the Doctor says, pointing.

Yaz looks at the picture again, then at the Doctor. She can’t hide her expression of consternation. “Then that old man—”

“Yep! That’s me.” The Doctor looks up and catches Yaz’s face. “I did tell you I used to be a man.”

“Yeah, but I…” Yaz scrambles for the words. “I wasn’t expecting… that.”

“You don’t like it?” The Doctor looks back at the picture. “I suppose it is fairly different. But that was a long time ago. I’ve been through a lot of changes since then.”

She flips forward a few pages, to an image of a couple of men in what appears to be a military facility, arguing with each other. One of them is very tall, with the most ridiculous head of fluffy, white hair that Yaz has ever seen. The other has what could fairly be described as an equally ridiculous mustache.

Yaz looks at the Doctor. “Which one is you?”

“That one,” the Doctor says, pointing to the tall one. “And that’s my dear friend the Brigadier.” She looks up and sighs. “Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. How I miss him.”

“We could go and visit him,” Yaz suggests. “Wouldn’t he be surprised to see you now?”

But the Doctor shakes her head, her expression downcast. “Can’t, I’m afraid. The timing’s wrong. There’s certain rules I can’t break, and… I just can’t.”

Yaz is curious, but she doesn’t let it get the better of her. She puts a hand on the Doctor’s arm. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” the Doctor says, a little too brightly. “You couldn’t have known.”

She flips forward several pages, fast enough that Yaz only catches glimpse of the next few images. There are a few more pictures of her as the tall man, and a few of them have other people in them as well, but the Doctor doesn’t stop to explain. She only stops when they reach a picture of a man with ridiculously curly hair and an even more ridiculous scarf. He stands with a woman dressed all in pink, inside what Yaz recognizes after a moment as the console room of the TARDIS, though it has gone through a significant makeover.

“Let me guess,” Yaz says, and points at the man.

The Doctor nods. “That was an interesting one. I made a lot of friends. A few enemies, too. Oh, that’s Romana.”

“She looks nice,” Yaz says.

“Oh, she was. She was. She made a good president, too, from what I understand.”

“President?”

“Of Gallifrey.”

“Oh!” Yaz blinks in surprise. “She’s a Time Lord, too?”

“Was,” the Doctor says, again a little too breezily. “Far as I know she went when Gallifrey did.”

This seems to be another touchy subject, so before the Doctor can do anything, Yaz reaches across and turns the page for her.

The next picture is of a young, blond man, holding hands with a woman in purple and a boy in yellow as they run along a barely-lit corridor. By now Yaz has gotten the hang of it, and she points at the blond man.

“You’re getting good at this,” the Doctor says, beaming at her. “The next one’s going to be even easier. But I don’t want to give it away. That’s Tegan, and that’s… Adric.”

Another sad one. “You’ve known a lot of people, Doctor,” Yaz says, in an attempt to distract her.

“I have,” the Doctor says. “Some good, some bad. Mostly good, I’m happy to say. But listen, there was a point to me showing you all this.” She flipped to the beginning of the book, before there were any pictures, and sighed. “Oh, I’d hoped to be able to show you… I wasn’t always a very nice man, Yaz. When I first started out, I just wanted to get away from it all. I stole a TARDIS and ran away from home with my granddaughter.”

“Granddaughter?”

The Doctor nods. “Susan. I haven’t seen her in a long time. She… settled down on Earth, some time ago.”

“Doctor, how old are you?” Yaz says. It’s the first time she’s asked her point blank, and it doesn’t surprise her when the Doctor’s answer is a bright smile.

“Older than I look,” she says. “The _point_ is, I didn’t set out to do good. I was selfish, to the point where I was willing to put people’s lives at risk if it meant getting my way. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.” She sighs again. “I’d like to say I got better with time, but it’s not a linear progression. Ha, just like time, really.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Yaz says.

The Doctor closes the book and turns to Yaz, a serious expression on her face. “I want you to know what you’re getting into,” she says. “I know what I must seem like to you, but it’s not as simple as that. I’m kind because I want to be, not because it’s the way I am naturally. I’ve hurt people. I’ve even gotten people killed, though never intentionally. I think. I try to do good now to make up for all the bad I’ve done in the past. I’ve bee selfish, rude, hurtful… I’ve been all kinds of things. I don’t want you to think of me as some kind of paragon of goodness, because that’s not what I am.”

Yaz looks at her. Even as the Doctor tells her all this, all she can think is how wonderful she is, how kind, how…

How did she…

“Graham told you, didn’t he?” she says.

“What? No!” The Doctor makes an attempt at an indignant face that lasts for about half a second. Then she wrinkles her nose. “Okay, yeah, he might have mentioned something. But look, Yaz, you’re not the first. I just want you to know who it is that you’re falling in love with.”

Love. The word sends a shudder down Yaz’s spine. “Well… I like what I’m seeing so far.”

“Do you? Do you really?” The Doctor flips forward in the book, much farther forward, to a handsome man in a suit. He slumps in front of the TARDIS console, and it takes a moment for Yaz to see that this picture is moving, too, the only motion in it being the man’s back going up and down as he sobs.

“I broke the laws of time,” the Doctor says. “Because I thought I had the right. Because it was only me, you see. That was after Donna… I got her hurt, too. Badly hurt. She doesn’t remember me. She can’t. Too dangerous. And before her, there was Martha, and I hurt her too, in a different way. And there was Rose.” She pauses, the subject clearly painful to mention. “I… got her trapped. In another dimension. It wasn’t my intention, but it was my fault. That’s what happens to people who travel with me. They get hurt.”

“Not always,” Yaz protests. “Not us.”

“No? What about Grace?”

It’s like ice in Yaz’s veins. The Doctor looks away. “I’m sorry, Yaz. I just want you to understand… being with me, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s not easy. I try to be kind, but I can never know when I’m going to muck it up again.”

Yaz hesitates only the barest moment before she puts a hand on top of the Doctor’s. “Doctor?”

The Doctor looks at her and smiles softly. “Yes, Yaz?”

“I think I’d like to be with you anyway. If that’s all right with you.”

The Doctor’s smile turned broad. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

Yaz barely has time to smile back before the Doctor swoops in and kisses her on the lips. It only lasts a second before the Doctor pulls away, touching her lips. “I’m sorry. Was that too forward? I’ve never done it quite like this before.”

“No,” Yaz says quickly. “It was fine. I liked it. Only…”

“Only what?” The Doctor’s face is the picture of concern.

“Can we keep looking at your journal? Only the happy stuff if you’d rather.” Yaz pulls her feet up and curls up against the Doctor’s side. “I like seeing how you used to be. It’s like looking at baby pictures, only better.”

The Doctor smiles and puts her arm around Yaz. “All right, then. Only the happy times.”

They sit together like that for a while, looking at happy memories and laughing. Yaz can still taste the Doctor’s lips on hers, as brief as the contact was. Despite her worries, all she feels is happy. It turns out that the Doctor reciprocating her affection is the best outcome, not the worst.

And the thought of Graham’s face when he found out he had been right all along… well, she can deal with that later. For now, the happiness is all that matters.


End file.
